Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Roger Simon cleans Paul Krugman’s clock

Paul Krugman, aided by more than 500 commenters, launched a hysterical rant about the Republican war on science, all of which is embodied in Perry’s skepticism about anthropogenic global warming. Krugman and his acolytes are unanimous in their opinion: Republicans are anti-scientific, book burning, people burning, Galileo hating, troglodytes. (Neither he nor his groupies are as elegant or eloquent as I in saying so.)

There’s only one little problem: in his rant, Krugman kind of forgot, just a little bit, er, science. Roger Simon explains it to him, using simple words that even Paulie could probably understand. Here’s a taste:

But wait a minute. I don’t want to be unfair to Paul. He may not be up to speed on the latest findings, but he knows how you prove things scientifically. He tell us “…the scientific consensus about man-made global warming — which includes 97 percent to 98 percent of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences — is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting.”

I get it. The more people that believe something, the more it is true…. Oh, no. Sorry, Paul. I have to tell you you just flunked seventh grade general science. Or you forgot it. The number of people who believe something is irrelevant. What proves something to be true is that it can be replicated by experiment.

RATES of mental illnesses including depression and post-traumatic stress will increase as a result of climate change, a report to be released today says.
The paper, prepared for the Climate Institute, says loss of social cohesion in the wake of severe weather events related to climate change could be linked to increased rates of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse.
As many as one in five people reported ”emotional injury, stress and despair” in the wake of these events.
The report, A Climate of Suffering: The Real Cost of Living with Inaction on Climate Change, called the past 15 years a ”preview of life under unrestrained global warming”.
”While cyclones, drought, bushfires and floods are all a normal part of Australian life, there is no doubt our climate is changing,” the report says.
”For instance, the intensity and frequency of bushfires is greater. This is a ‘new normal’, for which the past provides little guidance …
”Moreover, recent conditions are entirely consistent with the best scientific predictions: as the world warms so the weather becomes wilder, with big consequences for people’s health and well-being.”
The paper suggests a possible link between Australia’s recent decade-long drought and climate change. It points to a breakdown of social cohesion caused by loss of work and associated stability, adding that the suicide rate in rural communities rose by 8 per cent.
The report also looks at mental health in the aftermath of major weather events possibly linked to climate change.
It shows that one in 10 primary school children reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of cyclone Larry in 2006. More than one in 10 reported symptoms more than three months after the cyclone.
”There’s really clear evidence around severe weather events,” the executive director of the Brain and Mind Research Institute, Professor Ian Hickie, said.
”We’re now more sophisticated in understanding the mental health effects and these effects are one of the major factors.
”What we have seriously underestimated is the effects on social cohesion. That is very hard to rebuild and they are critical to the mental health of an individual.”
Professor Hickie, who is launching the report today, said climate change and particularly severe weather events were likely to be a major factor influencing mental health in the future.
”When we talk about the next 50 years and what are going to be the big drivers at the community level of mental health costs, one we need to factor in are severe weather events, catastrophic weather events,” he said.

This is the newest and latest slogan- applicable to everything and anything. It really gets my Irish up. There is no, I repeat, “NO NO NO” no such thing as a ‘new normal’. There is normal and abnormal. Jensen is abnormal. The talking heads are hellbent on upending the world followed by the slogan – “It the new normal.”

Krugman is both – abhorrent and abnormal.

MacG

Catastrophic events cause trauma period. This does nothing to evaluate the accuracy of ‘models’. Inaccurate models cause a lot of hysteria and arm flapping that does cause anxiety. America used to be a safe place like where I grew up in San Rafael. Then we bring into our live ‘news’ about catastrophes from around the globe and it gets linked in some brains that it is happening right in our backyard so some get nervous even though it is the same relatively safe place it was. Like when we had the debate to show the trade towers falling over and over again the little kids could not differentiate that it was not happening all over again and inducing a state of fear. So it is the scientific prophets that are causing the depression in a hopeless people, however a people that hope in something bigger that it all can have peace.